PROCTOR

( Procurator , Lat.) Proctors are officers established to represent, in judgment, the parties who empower them (by warrant under their hands, called a proxy ) to appear for them to explain their rights, to manage and instruct their cause, and to demand judgment. The representatives of the clergy in convocation are also called proctors. The same name is given to university officers, whose busine is to guard the morals and preserve the quiet of the university at Oxford and Cambridge; to present candidates in arts and music for their degrees; and (formerly in a more special manner than at present) to superintend their public exercises. The latter is now the prominent practice of the proctors in the university of Dublin: the senior proctor presiding at the Masters’ exercises, the junior at the Bachelors’. They are two in number, and chosen annually by the several colleges in cycle. Procurators were officers in some of the ancient universities of Europe, as in Paris; they were then four in number, elected annually, each by one of the four nations into which the students were divided: and the rector, the deans of divinity, law, medicine, and the four proctors, formed the standing council of the university: somewhat analogous to the caput at Cambridge. The deans were the proctors of their respective faculties. Anciently the university of Oxford was divided into two “nations,” as they might be called, each of which was represented by a proctor.